


Small Talk

by deervelvet



Category: Gundam 00
Genre: Gen, PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-10
Updated: 2018-09-10
Packaged: 2019-07-10 18:45:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15955274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deervelvet/pseuds/deervelvet
Summary: Soma and Louise attempt to make idle chatter. [Oneshot drabble.]





	Small Talk

“I’ve heard this is one of the better meals they serve here.”

 

Louise flinched as she was forcibly pried from out of her own thoughts, half miffed at the interruption and half grateful for having been fished out of the darker corners of a place that had become too familiar. She had come to prefer being alone too much for her own good, and she knew it. It wasn’t conducive to recovery — her therapist had told her as much. But she never felt up to the task of socializing these days, and if she did, she much preferred to people watch from a distance. Today, she hadn’t even been up for the latter, and so found herself parked in a booth in the mess hall, eyes fixed out the window listlessly staring at the pinpoints of white against endless darkness.

 

“Lieutenant Peries,” she greeted dutifully, already rising to her feet and forming a crisp salute.

 

“At ease,” her superior dismissed, looking almost apologetic at having disturbed the subordinate soldier. “I was just hoping I could join you for lunch?” She dipped her head toward the laden tray in her hands demonstratively.

 

“Oh. Of course,” Louise said, although the pause that preceded her reply and the way her legs hitched as she was already lowering herself back into her seat betrayed how off-guard the request had caught her.

 

“Thank you.” With that, Soma took her place across the table from Louise and immediately set into her food, methodically cutting everything into equally sized bites better fit for a small animal than an adult human. Louise, having no interest in her own meal, watched in silence, her knee jiggling nervously under the table and her organic hand tracing the nearly invisible joint plates of her synthetic one. She waited for Soma to say something; the Lieutenant must have had business to discuss with her if she’d singled Louise out when there were clearly numerous empty tables and seats. And so Louise waited.

 

And waited.

 

And Soma just sat there, eating perfectly portioned bites of food like some kind of robot, and things became painfully awkward.

 

Louise couldn’t bear it; she had to ask. “Sorry, but did you need something, Lieutenant?”

 

Soma froze with a bite of food halfway to her mouth. “Oh,” she said, as if surprised by the question. “No.”

 

Louise stared her down, waiting for more of a response.

 

Soma, thankfully, seemed to understand as she explained, “I was thinking that maybe you and I could just talk.”

 

“Talk?”

 

“Talk.”

 

Louise fixed her line of sight on the grey linoleum of the dining table in front of her and murmured, “Sure.”

 

There was a pause.

 

“I noticed your accent, but I admit that I’m not great at identifying extra-HRL languages,” Soma explained suddenly. The statement had had no build-up, no lead-in. Just _boom_ — there it was. “French?”

 

“Spanish,” Louise corrected, still trying to catch up to meet Soma’s pace.

 

“Ah,” Soma replied.

 

“I speak some Japanese, too. Conversational. Nothing too technical.”

 

“Wow,” Soma replied. She genuinely sounded interested, but if that was the case, she made no effort to continue that topic. Seemingly having reached the final stop for that train of thought, the two young women fell silent again.

 

It occurred to Louise that in another life, perhaps, or maybe somewhere in a parallel universe, the two of them might have somehow been friends. Maybe, instead of two lives so different in all respects except for a stolen childhood replaced by hardships much too heavy for their slender shoulders, they could have found one another through a primary school pen-pal project. Snail mail penned in rudimentary English in the babyish scrawl of a young child could have described their pets, their families, their favorite school subjects. Maybe Louise would have first met Soma as an exchange student to her secondary school. The teacher would have introduced her as a new student all the way from Russia, cuing the oohs and ahhs and innumerable questions of a dozen teenagers whose collective knowledge of foreign customs was admittedly lacking. Maybe they would have met in university, both of them having selected side-by-side seats in the very first class on the very first day of school, still walking on clouds at having been accepted into the program of their first choice. Maybe they would have graduated together, been engineers together, kept one another updated on their positively ordinary lives as they worked, found love, started their own families, sunk into a boring but comfortable routine.

 

Maybe, and even if not, it was nice to dream.

 

As it was, however, this was painful.

 

“I’m sorry.” It was Soma who broke the standoff. “I’ve never been good at small talk.”

 

“It’s—“ Louise paused. Was it okay? Okay that the Lieutenant had approached her and interrupted her alone time when she knew that she had no skills in socialization? To, what? — use her for practice? Why bother? What was the point? The Louise from before might have been all too happy to lead the conversation, and the Louise from the alternate universe where nothing bad ever happens might still be all too eager to take charge, but this Louise had no desire to open up anymore. Learning about another person was a chore that required significant energy on her part - energy she didn’t necessarily have on a reliable basis. Energy she didn’t have enough of today. Energy that was bound to sum up to a complete waste of time once that person was eventually removed from her life.

 

And yet.

 

And yet, Louise had to admit to herself that she desperately missed the small acts that brought some sort of normalcy to her life. If making pleasantries and vapid chit chat with Lieutenant Peries would get her where she needed to go, to where she needed to escape, then why not? She could use her right back.

 

“It’s okay,” she decided. It was okay. She managed a soft and weary smile. “I used to be a huge gossip. I doubt you’d ever imagine that.”

 

Soma mirrored the smile, awkwardness and inexperience and relief in place of the tiredness of Louise’s own. “You’re right,” she replied.“It’s hard to imagine. You’re very no-nonsense.”

 

“I suppose every fourteen year old girl is kind of a loudmouth to a certain degree,” Louise mused jokingly. “There are always boys to impress. And other fourteen year old girls — that’s the important one.”

 

Lieutenant Peries giggled, and Louise saw the youth in her features. The perpetually harsh line of her brow softened, and her cheeks swelled and crinkled her eyes. A strand of her always perfectly pinned hair sprung loose as Soma tilted her head forward to hide the grin — just for a moment, and then it was tucked back into place. And it hurt Louise to catch a glimpse of the person Soma should have been, but she swallowed down the sickly feeling that knotted her insides up into a tangle of depression and anger and fear.

 

“Admittedly, that is also hard for me to imagine,” Soma replied. “My childhood was spent mostly with adults.”

 

“Only child?” Louise guessed.

 

Soma’s eyes swept across the table and down toward the floor as if she was trying to remember the right answer for a test. “Yes and no,” was what she managed to come up with. “It was a group home situation.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Louise murmured. She tried hard not to think about Soma being an orphan, because the only destination down that path was Louise huddled in her bunk gulping down a handful of pills that would maybe take the edge off of a full-blown panic attack triggered by her own similar situation. But the thought had been planted, it was there, and it stuck around like mildew and water stains in an old photo album. There was no stopping the spread now. “But then, wouldn’t you have been around lots of kids?” she forced herself to say after sucking in a sharp breath. Her face and good hand felt clammy with icy sweat.

 

“That’s true. I suppose they were always around,” Soma said. “But I didn’t spend much time socializing with my peers. And I was with doctors more often than not.”

 

“I see,” Louise nearly whispered. She knew she should have asked for more; Soma had dangled a line like an angler waiting for a bite, giving Louise an opportunity to lead. But she didn’t feel up to it. She didn’t feel good.

 

“I’m sorry.” This time, there was no lapse in conversation before Soma apologized. “I’m making you uncomfortable,” she reasoned. The ease which with she’d spoken just moments prior was replaced now with an almost mechanical quality. She was Lieutenant Peries the A-Laws soldier, not Soma the young woman. All pomp and circumstance and façade, and all of that was ruined by the slightest expression of crestfallen disappointment that practically screamed its presence from her sharp features. “It was improper of me to ask a subordinate to act so casually with me. Please excuse me.”

 

“Wait,” Louise squeaked as Soma stood, already gathering up her tray. “I’m just— I want to know. More — about you, I mean, and my other comrades, too, but I just....”

 

The Lieutenant looked unsure. Louise didn’t blame her. She heaved a sigh that quivered like a plucked violin string. “I can’t. I’m not ready to be close to anyone.”

 

Louise could feel Soma studying her. Could she see how much of a defective toy soldier Louise was? How much of a broken woman? How much of a pathetic little girl? Did Soma pity her, or would she be ashamed and repulsed that someone so ill equipped for the life of a soldier had lied and wormed her way in? Would she report her to the higher ups? Could she tell she was faking? Did she see her for the sick person she was? Did anyone even see a person when they looked at Louise anymore, or did they see anxiety and addiction itself?

 

The thing that had been planted in her was in full bloom. It happened so quickly these days. Louise’s thoughts were reeling. She felt as if her skull would split open at any moment and out would come rushing all of her pent up thoughts and feelings.

 

“You’re—! It’s okay!”

 

The pain was gone, and the Lieutenant was flashing a kind of meek and unsure smile at her, the gesture tainted by the way her teeth were bared and lip drawn back into a snarl.

 

The throbbing in Louise’s head had dissipated in an instant, and in its stead had come a cold and prickly static. It was unpleasant, but not as much so as what she’d felt just moments ago, and it was almost peaceful, if not lonely. She was used to lonely. She could do lonely.

 

“It’s okay,” Soma repeated. “Maybe you will be ready one day, and then we can talk.”

 

Soma was massaging her temple with her left hand, using her other to balance her tray. Had Louise done that? Had Louise’s pain been so great in that moment that even the Lieutenant had felt it? Psychosomatic trauma had become a term prominent in Louise’s repertoire, and she’d pored over hundreds of articles from support groups and physicians alike about the phenomenon, but she’d never heard of emotional distress causing physical symptoms in another person.

 

“Right,” Louise said, nodding and letting her eyes drop down to her hands. “Right, maybe then.”

 

“Take care, Halevy.”

 

It didn’t sink in until later, much later — after she’d tucked herself into her bed to ride out the fit of shuddering, dry sobs and the spinning in her head and the side effects of her pills, around the time that the pure and total exhaustion resulting from the panic attack began to creep its way into her mind and body, that Louise decided she was almost certain the Lieutenant hadn’t opened her mouth to speak those last couple sentences. It didn’t make any sense, but then again, few things did make sense in Louise’s world. In the morning, Louise would write it off as _just one of those things_ and perform her duties as normal.

 

But maybe she would have lunch with Lieutenant Peries again soon.

**Author's Note:**

> I like to think that these two might have been close if the stars had aligned in a different way. As it is, I think they’re probably both very difficult to hold a long conversation with, but are both great once you get them to lower their defenses. I’m also interested in whether or not their quanta would have ever interacted. I think Soma, having had them for her entire existence, would have been more experienced and identified them more quickly. Louise had so much going on at the time that she probably wouldn’t have even noticed.
> 
> I’d intended to use this for Gundam 00 Fanweek back when, but I just wasn’t able to stick to the theme with it. So I saved the start of the post and wrapped it up later. 
> 
> This one would be set some time near the beginning of S2. No specific time here, really. 
> 
> I didn’t intend for this to be shippy, but if this is your rarepair of choice, then hey - go for it!


End file.
